The Year In Live Reviews

If as a slightly cool mom, you didn't know the Rentals or the Flaming Lips, you woulda just heard a lot of major chords (the kind that sound good in folk songs or on the radio) pile up over a spacey psych backing track, bleeps and bloops sparkling like Christmas lights, and you'd think, as you kept a set of fingers on the unflung cotton undies in your purse, "Yeah, songs!" Steve's last song ("Song for Dustmites") slips out of a slack intro into a cartoon-y rocket-launch finale that really did have a little Flaming Lips inside it (though the drummer couldn't help stepping all over the pretty parts), and the first thing we heard as we left the club was Syd Barrett, and that didn't seem disjointed at all—Syd, Nickelodeon Jr. would have loved you; wish you were here. Though most people don't know a lot about music (statistics: there are seven billion people in the world, and a lot of them have never even encountered clean running water, much less a Pere Ubu single), most of them can tell whether or not they feel happy or sad, and if they are a slightly cool mom and they are happy, they might do something like slosh a martini in a little whorl at the end of their wrist and yell, "I love you, Steve!" Though, you know, they might do that if they're sad, too. (CZ)

EUGENE EDWARDS

FITZGERALD'S IRISH PUB, HUNTINGTON BEACH

SUNDAY, AUG. 1

Eugene Edwards, was—oh, how about completely fucking brilliant? Edwards brought loud, ornery, impossibly catchy melodies to the stage, and he played everything with the passion of a man who was combusting right before you on a night when we really needed to hear something new and fantastic and life-affirming (we had just returned from three weeks in a region where we fear "Redneck Woman" has been declared the new National Anthem). He's a killer guitar man, and we'd totally do a huge feature story on him had Joel Beers not beaten us to it ["This Is Pop," March 5]. The girl running the IPO merch stand in back seemed to agree with us, mouthing the words to all his songs and bopping her head along, with a glassy gaze in her eyes that said, "Life can't possibly get any better than watching Eugene Edwards." We can only concur. (RK)

ANDREA ECHEVERRI

JC FANDANGO, ANAHEIM

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 11

Echeverri has irrevocably changed: gone are the days of metal guitars, articulate anger and smartly placed trip-hop blips. Tonight, Echeverri debuted a sort of Latin hip-hop lounge: bass hum anchoring slow-moving acoustic ruminations about life, love and motherhood. She only set down her overstickered guitar to strike goofy poses or point toward the sky, and her voice was as gorgeous as ever—you could put her larynx on a spit, carve out slices and wrap it within a pita. But it all played like lullabies for radicals. While the audience smiled all night, there was a sense of frustrated nostalgia. After all, onstage was the Kali of rock en español singing about . . . the joys of breast-feeding? (GA)

2MEX

DETROIT BAR, COSTA MESA

THURSDAY, AUG. 12

In his checkered Vans, baggy shirt and oversized jeans, 2Mex looked like he just rolled out of bed and said, "Shit, I have to play Costa Mesa to a crowd of people who only listen to hip-hop if KIIS plays it?" But songs such as "Baby I Ain't Joking" (which he sang while staring at his girlfriend) sounded good even without Awol One, who lent his smoky vocals to the album version. "Alive-a-Cation" (with a hard electric-guitar sound) got the four guys in the front to jump around and pump their fists, though it had little effect on the blonde riding a man's crotch like he was going to start spitting out quarters. 2Mex has a stage presence that lets us know how often he does this: even with only a few fans stuffed together just feet from his dirty slip-ons, he performed like the room was packed. (Charlie Rose)

ENRIQUE BUNBURY

THE GROVE, ANAHEIM

MONDAY, AUG. 16

Bunbury didn't disappoint when he finally sauntered onstage in a glittering cowboy outfit that recalled fat-era Elvis. He immediately delved into his whatsumever repertoire: monster-rock jams so wretched even Sammy Hagar would hold his nose, sinuous Middle Eastern tracks sutured onto Dixieland jazz, rockabilly, Delta blues, and some unclassifiable things that could play as easily at a circus as at a mortuary. This Iberian Robert Goulet closed his initial set with a tortured version of Mexican ranchera legend José Alfredo Jiménez's "El Jinete," Bunbury's gravel pit of a throat rasping out the song's defeated lament. And Bunbury even took time between the chaos to ask fans to "do the world a favor" and "change presidents in November, please." No rootin'-tootin' night would be right without a fight. After Bunbury concluded his third curtain call with a gruff waltz, a rockero jumped onstage and swiped Bunbury's jacket, which hung from a mic stand. A quadruple tug of war quickly ensued between the fan, Bunbury's people, Grove security and other rockeros scratching for a piece of the jacket. Nearby, a man flipped over a table and socked someone. Onstage, film credits rolled to "Fin." (GA)